1. Field of the Disclosure
This disclosure relates generally to apparatus and methods for a wireless system that utilizes the RTS/CTS protocol. More particularly, the disclosure relates to an apparatus and method for transmission and recovery modes for an RTS/CTS system that utilizes multiple channels.
2. Related Art
One type of wireless system is an RTS/CTS protocol system. In this system, a source node that desires to send data to a destination node over a communications channel sends a Request to Send frame (RTS) to the destination node over the communications channel. The RTS frame is also received by other nodes in the system that are in the vicinity of the sending node, and those other nodes should refrain from sending data for a given time, which is called a Network Access Vector (NAV) duration. The destination node sends back a Clear to Send frame (CTS) to the sending node, if it is available to receive data. The amount of time that a node should wait before trying to get access to a channel (the NAV duration) is included in both the RTS frame and the CTS frame.
A problem exists in the RTS/CTS protocol for multichannel wireless systems, in which the CTS bandwidth is smaller than the RTS bandwidth, in which the NAV duration has to be reset accordingly.